THE JOURNAL

Goodbye 2014

So I've kind of been thinking about this post all day.I wanted to write something but, to be honest, I was a little unsure of what to say.I was going to do a year in review sort of thing like I've done in the past, but for some reason I wasn't really feeling it. Although I did go back and read quite a few posts from this past year that I'd forgotten I'd written and, to be honest again, I think I needed to re-read.

Namely this one, this one, this one, this one, this one and well this one and this one too.I've been out of the blogging routine for some time now, and while it's mostly due to my excitement for the new blog/website next month and being a little tired of this current platform, it's also because I've had a hard time keeping up with all of the posts I need to write.

I think I got it into my head that if I hadn't done the work related posts that I needed to do, I couldn't do any others just because, and just for me. Which is silly.Because that's how this blog started. As something just for me. But I'm kind of a systematic, check off the list as it comes, sort of person and it's hard for me to get out of that sometimes. But anyway, point being, even though I have a system for this time of year, I'm going to toss it out the window and write something I actually feel like writing.

I have quite a lot of things that I'm thinking about though, currently, as I sit here in this chair, by my desk, before heading out for New Years Eve festivities. Quite a lot. And I think my lack of ability to properly sort through these thoughts and put them in a shareable format this evening is why I put off writing this post all day, but I did have a few things I wanted to be sure to say, if even just to myself, on this last day of 2014.

Overall, it's been a good year. A really very good and wonderful year.But it's also been a hard one for me too.In a lot of really big growing and stretching and painful ways.And I think this was the year I finally kind of realized that that's just how life is. There's a lot of good, but there's often a lot of bad too.But that, really, the good usually outweighs the bad, and that even the bad, doesn't end up being all that bad because it leads you, grows you, pushes you, into somewhere and something better.(Ignore the fact that that was probably a run on sentence and that I said "bad" like 45 times)

At least in my experience, and I think, if you really examine yours as well, it's probably the same for you. There's always going to be some not so great stuff that you have to deal with and get through, but so very often it makes for better circumstances than you were in before anyway.

I think one of the biggest things I learned this year though was the state of becoming. That you're really always becoming, you never arrive.

I am in a

constant

state of becoming.

I am growing, learning, failing, finding, wanting, stopping, starting, trying, staying, reaching, succeeding, dreaming, and all those other action words, always. Or at least I should be. Because that's the only way to live really. To go through all of it. The good and the bad.To the fullest and largest extent.

There are always going to be high points and there will always be low points. But it's what I do in and on the way to and from them that determine how the next ones will feel.How I feel overall.

I don't know if any of that really translates in the way I want it to, in the way I'm thinking about it up in my head right now. I know in and of themselves they aren't new ideas, and some of them are quite repeated and over talked about ideas really. But sometimes I think we all need a refresher on these sorts of things. Especially when looking back or even looking forward on stuff and needing to maintain perspective. Especially for someone who can so often get overly excited or impractical about things and needs reminders to have perspective.

*ahem*

Props to you if you actually read this whole thing. Again, these thoughts and reminders were mostly for myself this evening, but as always, I tend to share these with you because I feel like there's usually someone else out there who needs these words too.

So goodbye 2014.

There are some parts of you I'm really going to miss, and some parts I very much will not.But I am grateful for all of your parts.

Because together they make up a year that has produced the person that's here, right here, and I've really come to love this person that I've become and continue to become. Flaws and all.

Which is such an important thing, loving who you are, and without all that not so good stuff I don't think anyone can really learn to do that fully.So thank you 2014 for leaving me in this place, right where I am now, because it's good. It is.